Understanding the relationship between activity and neighbourhoods (URBAN) study: research design and methodology

2009 Badland et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Built environment attributes are recognized as being important contributors to physical activity (PA) engagement and body size in adults and children. However, much of the existing research in this emergent public health field is hindered by methodological limitations, including: population and site homogeneity, reliance on self-report measures, aggregated measures of PA, and inadequate statistical modeling. As an integral component of multi-country collaborative research, the Understanding the Relationship between Activity and Neighbourhoods (URBAN) Study seeks to overcome these limitations by determining the strengths of association between detailed measures of the neighborhood built environment with PA levels across multiple domains and body size measures in adults and children. This article outlines the research protocol developed for the URBAN Study.

Keywords

Physical activity, Body size, Obesity, Built environment

Citation

Badland, H. M., Schofield, G. M., Witten, K., Schluter, P. J., Mavoa, S., Kearns, R. A., et al. (2009). Understanding the Relationship between Activity and Neighbourhoods (URBAN) Study: research design and methodology. Bmc Public Health, 9. doi: 224 10.1186/1471-2458-9-224

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/10179/1701

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